Popular Preaching and Christianization in Theodosian-Era Constantinople

狄奥多西时代君士坦丁堡的大众传教和基督教化

• 批准号: 518180720
• 负责人: Dr. Robert Edwards
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Brisbane School of Theology
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2022-12-31 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/518180720?language=en
• 关键词: Popular; Preaching; Christianization; Theodosian; Era

During the reign of the Theodosian emperors (AD 379–457), Constantinople, the eastern capital of the Roman empire, underwent a period of intense Christianization. Although the city experienced Christianization under other emperors, it is at this time that Christianity began to take over both public and private life of the capital: the empire was governed from the city by baptized and sometimes ascetic emperors and empresses, urban monasticism took root, and the city’s bishop came to hold unprecedented power for such a young city. At the same time that the city’s institutions were being Christianized, it also attracted some of the most impressive preachers of the age. Some of these were Constantinople’s bishops (Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Nestorius, Proclus), and some visited at the pleasure of the emperor and his family (Gregory of Nyssa, Severian of Gabala). Far from treating these historical facts as coincidental, this project contends that Constantinople was thoroughly Christianized not only through institutions, but also through an intensive program of preaching. The key objective of this project is to explore how preachers sought to Christianize Constantinople’s populace. While it will examine the substantial ritual and ethical changes that preachers sought to bring about, it focuses on how preachers cultivated a Christian imagination among their Constantinopolitan audiences. For although many institutions had already been ‘de-paganized,’ much work remained to Christianize the cultural and thus religious imaginations of Constantinople’s populace. This project highlights five areas of change: (1) the Christianization of space, with Constantinople’s places being demarcated as either sacred or demonic; (2) the Christianization of time, in which the day, the week, and the year were ordered around Christian feasting, fasting, and prayer; (3) the Christianization of urban politics, in which heresy and orthodoxy became political matters; (4) the Christianization of Roman mores, in which the elite assumed new cultural norms inherited not by pagan forebears, but by Christian ones, (5) the role that the new narratives of Christ and the saints played in the cultivation of a new imagination, over and against the traditional stories that dominated a city still in the process of becoming Christian. By focusing on this specific location and timeframe, for which there is a significant amount of evidence, we can come to a better understanding of how Christianity came to dominate urban life within the Roman empire.

在狄奥多西皇帝统治时期（公元379-457年），罗马帝国的东部首都君士坦丁堡经历了一段强烈的基督教化时期。虽然这座城市在其他皇帝的统治下经历了基督教化，但正是在这个时候，基督教开始接管首都的公共和私人生活：帝国由受洗的皇帝和皇后统治，有时是苦行的皇帝和皇后，城市修道主义扎根，城市的主教对这样一个年轻的城市来说拥有前所未有的权力。在这座城市的机构被基督教化的同时，它也吸引了一些当时最令人印象深刻的传教士。其中一些是君士坦丁堡的主教（纳齐安祖斯的格列高利，约翰·金索斯托姆，聂斯脱里乌斯，普罗克劳斯），还有一些是为了皇帝和他的家人的高兴而访问的（尼萨的格列高利，加巴拉的塞维里安）。这个项目并没有将这些历史事实视为巧合，而是认为君士坦丁堡被彻底基督教化不仅是通过制度，而且是通过密集的传教计划。这个项目的主要目标是探索传教士如何试图使君士坦丁堡的民众基督教化。虽然它将考察传教士试图带来的实质性仪式和伦理变化，但它侧重于传教士如何在君士坦丁堡的听众中培养基督教想象力。因为尽管许多机构已经“去异教徒化”，但要使君士坦丁堡民众的文化和宗教想象基督教化，还有很多工作要做。该项目突出了五个方面的变化：(1)空间的基督教化，君士坦丁堡的地方被划分为神圣或恶魔；(2)时间的基督教化，其中的日、周、年都是围绕着基督教的盛宴、禁食和祈祷来安排的；(3)城市政治的基督教化，异端和正统成为政治问题；(4)罗马习俗的基督教化，精英们接受了新的文化规范，这些文化规范不是由异教徒祖先继承的，而是由基督徒祖先继承的；(5)关于基督和圣徒的新叙述在培养新的想象力方面所起的作用，与仍在成为基督教的过程中占主导地位的传统故事相对立。通过关注这个特定的地点和时间框架，有大量的证据，我们可以更好地理解基督教是如何在罗马帝国统治城市生活的。